A wide variety of oral care chemistry products are currently available in the market place. Typically, these products comprise at least two characteristics, or attributes, such as flavor and cleansing. Other characteristics can include texture (i.e. gel, paste, etc.) and appearance (i.e. mono-color, striped, sparkles, etc.). However, in a given oral care product, all of these characteristics must be combined to give the oral care product a specific character, range of effectiveness, result(s), and consumer experience.
There has been a great increase in the popularity of ‘premium’ chemistries. The ‘premium’ chemistries tend to be more expensive to produce and purchase than ‘non-premium’ chemistries. Many consumers are willing to pay an increased price for such premium chemistries in order to enjoy an oral care chemistry that more particularly suits their preferences, or needs, or that offers a greater variety of options than typically available in ‘non-premium’ chemistries.
Because of increased price or special ordering requirements, however, many consumers may find experimentation or the ‘trial and error’ associated with finding their most desired or effective type of oral care chemistry to be unacceptable. Many consumers do not understand how the various options correspond to their preferences or needs. Further complicating this situation is that in a given store, dozens of oral care chemistry options are available. Even further complicating this situation is that many different types of oral care chemistries have names or designations that can sound or appear confusingly similar to the consumer. Because of this confusion, the consumer is often unable to distinguish between different oral care chemistries or in some cases selects a different item than what the consumer intended.
The positive or negative reaction to a particular oral care product by a consumer is described as the product's ‘acceptance’. Whether or not a given consumer will ‘accept’ a given oral care product is a matter of taste, which is, of course, subjective.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a method and apparatus that can allow a consumer to identify one or more oral care products in which that consumer may have a greater chance of accepting than other available oral care chemistries. Such a method and apparatus should be simple to understand and use, yet provide for preference and/or needs matching. The methods and apparatus of the present invention are particularly well suited to assist the selection of oral care chemistry products, particularly premium oral care products.